In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on the safety and environmental impact of the disposal of hazardous waste materials, and specifically pharmaceutical waste. In many medical facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes, sharps containers are utilized for the disposal of medical needles. These containers collect the disposed medical needles and then the containers themselves may be collected by approved individuals and transferred to medical waste treatment sites. However, before medical needles are disposed of within the sharps containers, often the injectable pharmaceutical liquid within the syringe is discharged down a drain within the medical facility, joining the medical facility's wastewater and possibly traveling to a wastewater treatment site. Unfortunately, wastewater treatment sites are often incapable of properly treating various types of pharmaceutical waste, thereby increasing the chance that the injectable pharmaceutical liquid will end up in a local water supply environment. Similarly, medical personnel often dispose of solid pharmaceutical waste by rinsing the waste down a drain in the medical facility, resulting in the same hazardous implications described above with respect to liquid pharmaceutical waste. Moreover, the same disposal practices are often employed in residential homes with individuals requiring liquid and solid pharmaceutical products.
It is, therefore, desired to provide one or more containers to ensure the proper and safe disposal of liquid and solid pharmaceutical waste and to lessen the environmental impact resulting from the disposal of these products.